


Still Got This Thing (For You)

by rokhal



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: AU, Curtain Fic, F/M, Flying Dutchman, Future Fic, Transformation, curse, sea life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:23:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokhal/pseuds/rokhal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wanna take you somewhere untamed.</p>
<p>(Sometimes Will misses un-life on the Dutchman.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Got This Thing (For You)

The ship was stretching and breathing in the warm green sea: her stays and shrouds were live and taut like the sinews of a marlin, her sails drank the gentle light, the hermit crabs prowled, the barnacles waved their sieves in the current, the worms and jellies bloomed richer shades than any formal garden, and the water itself poured steadily through the gills of his throat, steady and natural as the blood in his veins. He found himself floating, one hand on the fore-topsail brace, bare feet just brushing the green-slick rail that was strangely warm to his skin; the black deeps dropped away below; the sky rippled above; porpoises chattered a mile off the starboard beam and he heard the sound as much in his back as in his ears, just as he heard the subtle tail-sweeping of a white-tip overhead, the distant splash of a stooping seabird, the far-off roar of a shoal of sardines.

She was clinging to the very nose of the bowsprit, toes stretched to the wood, one arm wrapped around a forestay. Her hair billowed behind her. A swarm of small squid hove in view, flashing red and white, rocketing here and there in curiosity, and tickling her with their little white fingers. She laughed, clear and sprightly. It was as though the sea and the ship could not bring themselves to change her, but smiled and led her to the court where the jesters played, where the shores boomed in the distance and the sea roads expanded above and below and to all quarters of the compass, where they could drop to the black and sail among the stars. At her smile, he forgot that he was slick with water and riddled with fanworms, dropped his sea-garden of an overcoat to drift upon the deck, and swam into the stays to take her hand. 

The squid coasted back and forth like sparks, a faint musk trailing in their wake. 

He fingered her hair, feeling her heartbeat on the water, almost in his spine. Quietly, she spoke. “I do.” She smiled, the warm light dancing in her eyes, and he tried to remember if he had asked her a question—it must have been a great question, a grave, important question, the one he was always asking, but he only wanted to cradle her to him and wondered if she might like to meet an albatross, and watched as she fluttered her fine fingers at a squid…

Will woke to the smell of coffee, the stutter of the machine’s dribbling in his ears, the first pale gray light in the morning clouds at the window. She lay beside him, eyes open, still watching.

“Another of those dreams?” she asked.

The sailing dreams. While channel-surfing a week ago, in a rare idle hour, Will had stumbled upon a nature special on the wonders of the deep. Transfixed, he had sat watching with his chin on his fists until Elizabeth returned to their small house, put an arm around his shoulders, and watched with him long into the night until the program switched to a reality drama about African weasels. For good or ill, the dreams had returned.

“A good dream,” said Will, brow furrowing as he stared at the ceiling, remembering. “You were there.”

“A good dream,” she repeated, an eyebrow raised.

Will nodded.

“At times, when you look so, I wish I could have sailed with you.”

“Look how?” he asked, turning to her.

“Wistful,” she said, stroking his face.

Will chuckled wryly and rubbed his forehead. “I am,” he admitted. “Some days I miss it, when I forget the ship was eating us alive. Some days I was glad you need never see, but others…”

“It sounds so strange,” she mused.

“Aye, it was.” He frowned. It seemed he would never forget. The scar would never fade, no matter how many times he took the Water. 

“We could go diving again,” she said. “In the lake.” The sea would not suffer his presence, not after his quarrel with Calypso.

Will sighed and sat up, looking about at their small room, with the rows of shelves of books whose pages had grown brittle and yellow before their eyes like autumn leaves, and trinkets, weaponry, knot-work, art. A teak box, a protective talisman from their first son, with the inlayed message “Do not open until Christmas (metaphorically)” in mother-of-pearl. Beyond the window, the damp pine boughs seemed close and unnecessary. 

He shrugged and smiled. “We could dive in the river when the salmon run in.”

She wrinkled her forehead in thought. “That sounds like nothing you described.”

“Most of it was that I was part fish,” he said. “But the salmon will be a sight.”

“Thousands, all charging in from the sea,” she said.

“I always wished I could see where those fish went,” he remarked. “We had no business in the rivers, and the fresh water stung.”

“Then we will see them,” said Elizabeth firmly. “Come, I will poach you some eggs.”

Will slipped out of bed, and they padded into the kitchen for coffee. Water rushed in the sink, and bubbled in the pot, and he remembered the days when the air had seemed always thin and cold, and the waves welcoming, and the touch of some warm-blooded creature like the side of a furnace, and the seas lay open in all directions, and the duty hurried him on.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before On Stranger Tides, back when I thought the Fountain of Youth actually, you know, made you immortal.


End file.
